On The Mark Blog - MarkSinderson.comhttps://www.marksinderson.com/blog/Fri, 24 Feb 2017 05:09:36 +0000en-USSite-Server v6.0.0-18123-18123 (http://www.squarespace.com)This is the blog where I share my thoughts on photography, food, craft <br/>beer, music, technology, health and fitness, nutrition and other things <br/>that make life more fun.Living Large-My Large Format Photography Journey BeginsPhotographyMark SindersonSun, 26 Feb 2017 01:07:40 +0000https://www.marksinderson.com/blog/living-large-my-large-format-photography-journey-begins54e250d7e4b033d521cdb258:58a4d019304544374ea81497:58afc010ff7c5097e6372e8bAfter nearly three years of wanting one, I finally purchased a Chamonix 4x5
large format camera. The camera will allow me to take my photography in a
new direction. Here's a little more about the camera, my first images, and
why large format photography is something worth pursuing.Go Big Or Go Home

I've never been much for going home early, so I decided to GO BIG! After almost three years of talking about it, I finally did it, I bought a large format (4x5) film camera. And with the purchase, I officially entered a new stage of my photographic journey. Entering the world of large format photography means that I'll have to adjust the way I go about making an image with a camera and that's exactly what I've been looking to do.

Here's the camera:

The Chamonix 045F1 4x5 Camera

The camera is the Chamonix 045F1. It's a 4x5 camera, meaning the film size is 4 inches by 5 inches. For those of you that don't realize how large that is, here's a nice comparison of the various frame sizes:

As you can see, the 4x5 film size is much, much larger than even a "full frame" 35mm film or digital camera. In fact the 4x5 is 15 times larger in terms of surface area! What this means is that a well made image on 4x5 film is going to hold significantly more detail and offer the potential for image quality that is untouchable by a full-frame DSLR.

With Potential Comes Challenges

Notice I said "the potential" in the last sentence up above, not "guaranteed". That's because, as we all know (or should know), it's not about the camera. Just because a camera has a large image area (digital sensor, film negative) doesn't mean that it will magically produce Pulitzer Prize winning images. All it means is that there is more opportunity to produce a good image but it's still up to the photographer to make it happen. In fact, some people could justifiably argue that a large format film camera almost certainly guarantees a poorer image quality for the typical photographer as compared to a digital camera. The reason is that the 4x5 camera is entirely dependent on the ability of the person using the camera. There are no electronics or computers at all in the camera. It's basically a light proof tube with a lens on one end and a film holder on the other.

That lack of automation in the camera is EXACTLY the reason I enjoy shooting film and is why I spent the $$ on this camera. Operating a large format camera requires patience and an attention to detail. It forces you to slow down, double check everything and really make sure you are ready to fire the shutter. That whole process is very appealing to me and I find this deliberateness connects me with the images I make.

My goal with this camera is to stretch my photographic abilities while creating quality images that I connect with. I have several projects that I'd like to start and this camera is the tool for the job.

Other Required Equipment

Along with camera, I've purchased most of the items for my "starter kit". First up is a lens:

Nikkormat-W 135mm f/5.6 Lens

What's a camera without a lens? One of the things that's nice about large format cameras is that, relatively speaking, lenses are cheap as there are many quality lenses available used. I decided to start out with a 135mm lens. It's considered a "normal" lens because it's in the range that gets used the most. In 35mm equivalents the 135mm is about the same as 45mm. This makes it a versatile lens that can be used in many situation.

Other accessories:

Pentax V Spotmeter, Sheet film holder and some film, both old and new

One of the things I'm looking forward to getting better at with my 4x5 camera is proper exposure. While today's digital cameras have fairly sophisticated light meters, large format cameras have zero light meters. Many large format photographers pick up a pricey electronic/digital spot meter but I decided to go with an oldie but goodie, a Pentax Spotmeter V. Like the camera, it's an all manual affair but it's easy to use and I expect to learn a lot about getting the best exposure for any scene by using this meter. I plan on using the meter to learn more about the Zone System

The other thing about large format cameras that is neat is the fact that each sheet of film needs to be loaded manually into a holder. I picked up 4 of the Fidelity elite holders from a guy in Virginia who was reducing his camera stuff. With the four holders I can load 8 sheets of film (each holder is double-sided). I'll probably pick up some more holders at some point.

The other item that is needed for a large format film camera is.......FILM. I decided I'd want some sheets of film to practice loading/unloading the film holders and development tank so I searched ebay and found someone selling a box of Ansco Versapan V film form 1963 for $5. I bought it and in addition purchased a box (25 sheets) of modern day Ilford FP4+ B&W film. I've had good results with this film in my 35mm and medium format cameras so I bought some for the Chamonix. I'll probably get a box or two of color film as well. Speaking of film, the larger sheet size of the 4x5 requires a different developing tank so I purchased this one from Stearman Press:

Stearman SP-445 Development Tank

The tank will allow development of up to 4 sheets of 4x5 film and will allow me to develop the film in the daylight. I still have to load the film into/out of the film holders and into the development tank in the dark. To do that I just hang a blanket over the doorway in our hall bathroom and use the vanity as a film loading table.

The First Images

The camera arrived a few days ago so I decided to give it a whirl and see what would happen. I loaded one of my film holders with two sheets of my 55 year-old Ansco Versapan film and took the camera out on our deck. I decided the back yard was as good a place as any to test out the camera. To show how easy and quick it is to take a photo, here's the simple steps in getting one image out of a 4x5 large format camera:

Setup and level camera on tripod

Attach lens to camera

open shutter on lens and focus camera on subject

Throw some sort of dark cloth over your head to block out the light (I used an old Black t-shirt)

Get under the dark cloth and view the scene on the ground glass on the back of the camera. The image is upside down and backwards, just to make it interesting :-)

Focus the camera and make any adjustments

Get back under the dark cloth and double-check your focus

Get out the light meter and figure out the proper exposure

Adjust the exposure for any "reciprocity failure" factors.

Manually set the exposure on the lens

Make sure to close the shutter on the lens

Double-check to make sure that the shutter is closed

Take a film holder and insert it into the back of the camera

Pray that you actually have film in that holder because you won't know until after you take the shot and develop the film.

Set the shutter

Triple check that the shutter is not open

Remove the dark slide in the film holder

depress the cable release and hope that the shutter fires correctly

replace the dark slide in the film holder making sure to flip it over to indicate that the sheet is exposed

Remove the film holder from the camera

Whew, that was a lot of work! One thing about large format cameras is that they are definitely NOT meant for impatient photographers.

I managed to expose the two sheets of film and rushed inside to load them into the tank so I could develop them. I wasn't really expecting much, what with the 55 year-old film or the fact that this was my first time using this type of camera. The opportunity for all kinds of things to go wrong with this scenario was pretty high. Well, imagine my surprise when I opened the tank after developing and I saw this:

Success!

I actually had images on the negatives! How good were they? well, that would have to wait until I scanned them, which I did today. The results weren't great but they weren't terrible either. Both images were under exposed. I think that was the result of the film being so old. I set the camera on the assumption that the film was still 100 speed but my guess is that the actual speed was closer to 50 after nearly 55 years of sitting in a box. I also noticed some leftover color on one of the negatives which indicates I didn't do a good enough job of pre-soaking the film to get all of the film backing color off the negatives. Even with that it's easy to see that there is so much more information in a 4x5 negative than smaller sized films. Heck, the scans of each negative were 350mb each, more than 4x the size of a typical medium format scan. Here are the images ( I did no post-processing on them):

Backyard 1 The first image from my 4x5 camera

Backyard 2

Closing Out

If you made it to here, congratulations! I know this was a long post but I hope it has proven informative. I'm really looking forward to using my Chamonix 4x5 camera and making quality images with it. Just like with the other film cameras I've been using I find the process of making an image on film to be relaxing and invigorating at the same time. Will I stop shooting a digital camera? No, I expect I will always use both digital and film cameras for my photography. They each have their strengths and weaknesses and it's great to be able to use both types of cameras to make great images.

Stay tuned as I expect I'll be posting more about my successes and failures (I'm sure there will be both) with my large format camera.

After way too many months away from this series, I'm happy to post my review of the fourth album produced at Studio One in Doraville GA. The album is the first album from the band "Elf" featuring Ronald Padavona. Who's that, you ask? Read on to find out..... This is the fourth review in my ongoing series that I call “Studio One Project: Great Music From Doraville” where I acquire and review a copy of every album that was recorded at Studio One in Doraville Georgia. Why would I do that you may be asking? Good question…..to find out the reason please check out the original post in the series (which has the table of albums recorded at Studio One along with links to my review of each album).

As always, before we dive into the review I must first issue this disclaimer:

“Warning, I am not a trained music reviewer! I’m just a guy who likes music. Anything that is said in any of my reviews is purely my own interpretation/opinion and should not be relied upon as an endorsement of the quality of any particular piece of music or compilation thereof.” How's that for Lawyerspeak? :-)

OK, now that we got that out of the way…onto the review!

Review #4 Elf

The fourth album produced or recorded at Studio One was the debut, self titled, release from Elf and featured a couple of iconic collaborators that helped define rock music. Many of you may have never heard of Elf but I bet many of you probably have heard of it's lead singer's later name, Ronnie James Dio.

Here’s a summary of the LP version of the album (courtesy of Discogs). You'll notice in the credits that there are a couple of members of one of the best bands of all time, Deep Purple, acting in the role of Producer-Ian Paice and Roger Glover:

The Purchase

Much like the last album review in this series finding a copy of the album in good shape took a little bit of time. As I'm quickly finding out when trying to find quality copies of these older/rarer albums, there oftentimes aren't a lot of copies of the albums for sale at any one time, especially in good condition. After a little searching I found a good candidate on Discogs, a VG+ copy from a highly rated seller. The cover was listed as G+. The problem was the price, which was very high ($45.00). If I bought this copy it would be the single most expensive album purchase to date!

Damn, this "vintage vinyl" phase I'm going through sure is getting expensive. I guess it's cheaper than a little red sports car though. :-) After some waffling back and forth along with double-checking the budget I plunked down my cash and waited for the vinyl to show up.

The Vinyl

After a 10 day wait the album arrived. As advertised, the vinyl was in very good shape but it did need a good cleaning, actually two good cleanings. I gave it my usual cleaning using my custom solution of distilled water, a drop of Palmolive pure dish soap and a lab-grade surfactant (Triton X-114) and tossed it on the turntable and noticed a fair amount of pops and clicks. I put the vinyl back on my cleaning machine (self made for <$50) and gave a good, vigorous 2nd cleaning. That did the job. The sound quality was much improved. It shows that even a good looking/glossy piece of vinyl can still need a good cleaning. The album is nearly 45 years old at this point and who knows what the "provenance" of this album was. All I know was that 2nd cleaning brought up a lot of dirt...

The Packaging

The album is a basic single vinyl LP in a standard cardboard sleeve. The cover is in OK condition (at best) but acceptable, especially since the vinyl was in good shape. It's obvious that this album has seen a lot of "shelf wear. The image on the front cover looks very Elf-like, though it does have a bit of an "evilness" to it. Here’s the front cover:

And here’s the back cover. As you can see it's in a little better shape than the front. The image is a typical shot of the band but there's that little naked elf-like thing running off the right edge, which is a little strange. The photos were taken by Ronald Padavona/Ronnie James Dio:

The First Listen

I grabbed a tasty beer, warmed up the Lounge LCRMKIII preamp (a great preamp, watch for a review at some point) and Pro-ject Debut turntable, put the newly cleaned vinyl on the cork pad, lowered the arm and sat down for a listen....

SIDE 1

The first side started with “Hoochie Koochie Lady” which is a fairly straight-forward 12-bar blues/honky tonk song. Not a bad opening number.

The second track, "First Avenue"is in the same vein as track one with Mickey Lee Soule once again providing a strong honky tonk piano backbone.

The third track is "Never More" and it's on a bit of a different track than the first two, taking a slight turn at the "heavy metal" intersection and doesn't look back. I felt a bit like I was listening to a Deep Purple or Black Sabbath song, which isn't surprising given that Paice and Glover are producers. The vocals by Ronald/Ronnie James are strong and solid along with some nice piano by Mickey Lee Soule. It's probably the most interesting track of the entire album.

"I'm Coming Back For You" is track #4 on the first side and it's more of a straight up gritty rock song with over-driven guitars in the front and piano backing it up.

SIDE 2

Side two starts off with "Sit Down Honey (Everything Will Be Alright)". To me, this is another honky tonk number mixed with some distinctive rock guitar riffs. It's a nice way to kick off side two.

"Dixie Lee Junction" is the second track and it starts off as a rock ballad but switches to more blues-focused with Ronnie longing to be away from the city and back in Tennessee. There's a nice distorted guitar solo from David Feinstein to keep things moving along.

"Love Me Like A Woman" is the 3rd track on side 2 and is more honky tonk influenced rock. Dio does a good job with the vocals but there's not too much special about the song overall.

The album ends with "Gambler, Gambler" and it closes out the album on a strong rock note. Like "I'm Coming Back For You" on side one, this track is edgier and more what you would associate with Dio based on his work in later groups like Rainbow and Sabbath.

Second Listen and Thoughts

Listening to music is something that can happen in just about any state of mind but I find that to really get into the songs I need to give things at least two concentrated and distraction free listening sessions. So, as I've done with every album in this series, I waited a while (3 months) to take another listen to Elf. The second time around the goal is to get a deeper view of what the whole album is about rather than concentrating on each track. I re-cued my "$45 piece of spinning plastic" on my Pro Ject Debut Carbon Turntable and sat down for another listen...

As I listened to Elf again, in it's entirety, I got a better feel/opinion for what this album is and represents in the career of it's most famous member (Ronald Padavona/Ronnie James Dio). It seems to me that Elf was a transitional project for Dio in the sense that it got him in the studio with two key people (Ian Paice and Roger Glover) who recognized his talents and allowed him to move to the "next level" in his career. The album's tracks reflect that with the majority of them from Dio's past (the honky tonk style songs) while a few show what the future would be like. The album itself is pretty basic but knowing where Dio ended up going it is interesting in that context.

The bottom line on Elf is that it's an interesting album in a historical context as it relates to the career of Ronnie James Dio. It is neat to say I have it in my collection, but only because of the fact that I'm deeply interested in collecting original albums produced at a long defunct studio here in Atlanta. For everyone else who's interested in it, I'd recommend finding a CD version or just listening to it on some streaming service (like Tidal) as part of your monthly subscription fee.

Up Next....

Assuming my schedule allows it I hope to have the next review in this series posted within the next few weeks. The album is "Get Right" by Mose Jones. Keep your fingers crossed.........

Help Support This Project

OK, here’s where I shamelessly ask for money :-) Seriously, buying vintage vinyl (heck this one album cost me $45) and hosting this site doesn’t come without a cost so any help you can provide toward that effort is greatly appreciated! If you like what you read and want to help out just click on one of the links below. You can get some music for yourself, or anything else that Amazon sells, by Clicking on one of the links.

]]>The Studio One Project: ElfHappy New Year And My Plans For 2017UncategorizedMark SindersonSun, 01 Jan 2017 20:32:52 +0000https://www.marksinderson.com/blog/happy-new-year-plans-201754e250d7e4b033d521cdb258:58a4d019304544374ea81497:58a4d181304544374ea85b4dHey everybody!
Wow, where did 2016 go? It's hard to believe 2017 is here but let me be among the first to wish all of you a Happy and prosperous New Year!

After a long break from actively updating this blog (auto posts from my Instagram have been the only real activity on this blog since March) I should be able to get back into the swing of things and actually start posting original content again. Let me bring Y'all up to speed on what's been taking up my time and let you in on my plans for this blog in 2017.

What I've Been Up To

Since March of 2016 I've been focused on a new path in my career which is finally coming together and should allow me to spend some more time indulging my many non-work pursuits, including this blog. Here's some more details:

Some of you may know what it is that I do for "work" but my guess is most of you have no idea. That is by design since I have always figured it's not very beneficial to mix "work and play". I'm still mostly of that belief but I think it's now fine to share some of the details, especially since the changes will allow me to offer my services to those of you that might be interested.

Since 2002 I have worked in the Financial Services field as a Financial Advisor/Planner. My desire was to offer true financial planning, not just sales of financial products. To that end I earned the CFP® Certification in 2006. For the last ten years I worked with an independent wealth management firm whose clients were typically "high net worth". This means that they had in the neighborhood of $1,000,000 of net worth (or more). While I enjoyed the people I worked with I originally got into the profession to help as many people as possible plan and secure their financial futures, not just millionaires.

So, last year I decided that it was time to make some changes and I began working with a start-up company dedicated to making quality financial planning available to anyone who wanted it. We are just about done creating the platform we will use and expect to roll it out early in 2017.

Once we go live, I will be able to offer low-cost, comprehensive financial planning and investment management services to just about anyone, anywhere. Our platform will be "virtual" meaning we'll use technology to deliver our services. We won't be tied to a specific office location or company. If you want to work with us you can, no matter where you are located. As I said, I'll let all of you know when things are ready to roll so stay tuned....

What does this mean for this blog? Well, the big benefit is that I will be in much more control of my time since I won't be tied to an office from 7AM to 6PM five days a week. The whole point of me making the changes I did is to help people "live their ideal life" and I want that to apply to me as well. I will be able to spend more time enjoying my out-of-work hobbies and as a result adding content to this blog. I'm a firm believer that life is much more than work and I want this blog to reflect that. Here's what I have planned, area by area that hopefully can help you "live your ideal life", whatever that may be.

Music

I've been a lover of music for a long time. Music is a powerful art form and I have been influenced by it my entire adult life. I have a lot of CD's and in 2015 I purchased a turntable and began collecting vinyl. Along those lines, I started my "Studio One Project" back in December 2015. The idea was to purchase and review each of the recordings (on vinyl, of course) that were done at Studio One, a now defunct studio here in Atlanta that produced some of the most iconic music of the 1970's and early 80's. Click the link above for more info. I made it through 3 of the 51 or so albums recorded there before I got derailed.

My plan is to pick the project back up here in the next week or so with a review of the 4th album, Elf, so stay tuned for that review. In addition to that project I will also review other music-related items (software, audio equipment, etc.). Hopefully my adventures in music will inspire you to experience some new music in your life.

Personal Finance

Now that I have more freedom in my professional pursuits I plan on sharing some useful information on the whole area of personal finance, financial planning and investments. I will probably use my firm's website/blog for most of this but expect to see some content as well. I'll update everyone on this as things come together.

Photography

I have been a enthusiastic amateur photographer since 2011 and really enjoy the challenge of interpreting the world around me through a lens. I haven't done nearly as much photography over the last year as I would have liked so I hope to be using my camera much more in 2017 and beyond. I'll try to post a few photography-related things here as I get time.

Technology

I'm not embarrassed to say that I've always been a geek. I enjoy gadgets and technology and I want to share that with the readers of this blog. My plan is to post reviews of gadgets, share tips and generally revel in world of technology

Health and Fitness

I've been a fitness lover since high school and have spent the last 40 years or so pursuing a balanced lifestyle that includes keeping myself physically fit and vital. The way I've pursued that has changed over the years but I think I can provide some useful tips, tools and resources to help people get the most out of life through diet and exercise.

Wrapping It Up

As you can see I am looking forward to re-engaging with the blog and everyone who reads it. Hopefully you enjoy what I produce and I am looking forward to engaging with all of you via the comments.

Stay tuned for all the fun! I expect that the first few posts will be focused on continuing the Studio One Project as well as talking about some dietary changes we most likely will be pursuing in the new year.